


what our story shouldn't be

by manusinistra



Category: Faking It (TV 2014)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-24
Updated: 2014-04-24
Packaged: 2018-01-20 16:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1516862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manusinistra/pseuds/manusinistra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The thing is, Amy doesn’t want to be popular.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what our story shouldn't be

The thing is, Amy doesn’t want to be popular.

Not really. Not like Karma, who’s talked about it for years (though Amy wonders sometimes whether Karma really wants it, whether it’s not more about the scheming than the end goal. Popularity, Amy thinks, might kind of bore Karma: she wouldn’t have anything to plot about).

Amy’s never vocalized this because she’s never had to – Karma’s crazy plans never come close to working. Case in point: girl thought she could springboard to homecoming royalty via fake blindness, and Amy loves her, really, but _no_. So there’s never been need for Amy to say it, and it’s easier to sigh along with Karma about their social standing than say “well, actually, I like it better this way.”

And Amy really does like the way things are. It’d be nice to have more people say hi as she walks down the hall, sure, but Amy has Karma and they’re perfectly fit to each other: years past the awkward that comes with new friendships, the trying to be cooler and funnier than you actually are to prove yourself worthy of someone’s attention. They can just be, and Amy loves that, not having to hold back her weirder thoughts. Karma just smiles and pats her arm, and then says something equally weird ten minutes later.

When Amy imagines being popular – having eyes on her everywhere she goes, having to perform for an audience – she feels a little sick to her stomach. It sounds like a lot of effort and not much fun at all, and why do things need to be different from how they are now?

Why would you mess with something that works?

Though Amy wonders too if “the way things are” works better for her than for Karma. She’s doesn’t have that desire for more – boys, parties, social recognition – in the way Karma so clearly does. Amy wants to want those things, knows she’s supposed to, but she’s happier on the couch watching Teen Moms with Karma than she would be with any of that. Karma’s happy too, but she could be happier – there’s something she’s not getting now that popularity would give her, that she can’t quite be content without.

And so Amy wants it for her. Amy wants Karma’s happiness more than anything, so she’ll support Karma in her quest to be homecoming queen; she’ll just watch from the audience when Karma’s on stage.

She has exactly zero worries about Karma deserting her should one of her schemes ever pay off – for one, they know far too many of each others’ secrets (mutually assured embarrassment, as Karma has called it), but more than that Karma just wouldn’t do it. Amy can’t remember a time before she and Karma were friends, knows her better than anyone else in the world and while she can be thoughtless and selfish she’d never knowingly cause pain to someone she cares about. That kind of cruelty is just not in her.

That’s why Amy knows they’d be fine, even if Karma gets in with the popular kids. She’d just be that vaguely weird girl Karma hangs out with all the time, and Amy could do that. There are worse ways to be known.

What she’s never thought about – what blindsides her with the whole fake lesbian mess – is that for Karma to be popular she’ll have to commit to it too. She probably should’ve seen the logic in this earlier: they’re together all the time, and it makes sense for their fates to be intertwined. Karma’s schemes have been individual ones, though – she’s never asked Amy to put on dark glasses and join her in pretending tumor-induced blindness – and so popularity has felt like Karma’s personal project. Amy mostly stands to the side and lets Karma do her thing (though not without saying how stupid her plans are and hugging her anyway after they fail).

So it’s not until Karma looks at her and says, “maybe we should see how this plays out,” that it dawns on Amy how big her role has to be here.

There are so many reasons Amy should say no: she’s bad at lying, for one, so them being found out is less a question of whether than when. Then there’s the fact that faking lesbianism for social gain feels pretty far from what activists mean by gay pride. Also, again, popularity is pretty much the opposite of what Amy wants.

And inevitably, of course, she says yes anyway. What else would she do, when how much Karma wants this shows in every part of her, when it’s within Amy’s power to make her happy?

They get up on the stage together, before the whole school, and when Karma wavers Amy commits them to following through. She pulls Karma closer, moves stutteringly in to her lips. When they kiss, Amy loses track of the world, the cheers and confetti and her soon-to-be stepsister glaring two feet away. There is only Karma, soft and lovely and brutal, exploding the foundations of everything Amy believed herself to be.

When the kiss breaks, Amy has a new reason not to do this: popularity won’t cost her Karma, but this, here, what they have to do to get it – this Amy’s not so sure about.


End file.
